Evgeny Zakharov, the CBG’s associate director of genomics, said making the domestic sample archive available through the new database “will increase the profile of Canadian science worldwide. It also puts Guelph on the global map.”

"It used to be much harder to access information about collections in museums, and we wanted to provide a digital platform to make these valuable species discoverable," says Austrian Institute of Technology researcher Eva Maria Sehr. The not-too-sustainable way of life has led to an exponential decline in biodiversity, which makes collecting even more difficult, says Sehr. "Many species are now protected and may no longer be collected, so if you want to use a species scientifically, you can go back to the GGBN database and not have to start all over again."